Around 70 years ago, another country went through one of the most destructive witch hunts in modern history. It was the start of the cold war and Senator Joe McCarthy led a public hysteria about the 'red peril,' communist traitors inside America who were helping the Soviets.
Over the next few years, the press also got on to the act and McCarthy used his position and popularity to attack everything he saw as 'Unamerican,' including the civil rights movement, homosexuality and any form of dissent.
Many in Hollywood were blacklisted or sidelined, including Lucille Ball &Charlie Chaplin, singers Pete Seeger and Lena Horne, writers Dashiell Hammett and Thomas Mann and even scientists like Einstein, Oppenheimer and Linus Pauling, who had been crucial to America's war effort.
How did McCarthyism finally die away? Many factors, but the 1st was the courage of one broadcaster, Edward C Murrow who called him out in a show on CBS in 1954. He edited together footage that showed his speeches for what they were, dishonest, abusive and downright dangerous.
Murrow's sum up for the show is a classic.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another.....
....We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men."
The final blow was during hearings on live television when the Army lawyer Joseph Welch told McCarthy after a particularly wild allegation, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
And at long last, America agreed.
McCarthyism caused a huge amount of damage to America and ruined countless lives, but finally McCarthy died discredited and alcoholic in 1957.
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